How does a former Wake County School Board member and failed candidate for state auditor land a seat on the town commission as a write-in candidate with no campaign, in the tiny mountain town she recently moved to? I don't know, but that's exactly what Debra Goldman managed to pull off in the little town of Ronda, located in eastern Wilkes County.

According to Shirley Johnson with the Wilkes County Board of Elections, unofficial tallies show 60 voters wrote in Reece's name, 59 wrote in Goldman's and 75 wrote in Foster's.

Foster is an incumbent who declined to file for re-election but changed his mind and ran as a write-in. He attempted to put Reece on the town board to fill a vacancy in 2012, but [Mayor] Varela derailed the effort.

Johnson said the election turnout of 131 voters was higher than usual. More than a third were absentee voters: 39 ballots came in by mail, and 12 were cast at one-stop voting, which Johnson said was also unusually high.

Something seems mighty fishy about this. Does election fraud carry the stench of rotting tuna?